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5 unusual facts about Casey Stengel


Casey Stengel

Mocking his well-publicized advanced age, when he was hired he said, "It's a great honor to be joining the Knickerbockers", a New York baseball team that had seen its last game around the time of the Civil War.

One of his most famous comments was actually the work of Jimmy Breslin, who used it as the title of his book about the first-year Mets, Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?.

As reported in Ken Burns' PBS documentary series, Baseball, Stengel remarked that he had been fired for turning 70, and that he would "never make that mistake again." In his 1962 autobiography, Stengel wrote that he'd gotten the sense he would have been forced out even if the Yankees had won the World Series.

Fedspeak

The brief essay mentions two other master practitioners of obfuscation, Hubert H. Humphrey and Casey Stengel.

Riverside Park, Dawson Springs

Hall of Famer Honus Wagner, who trained on this field for 3 years, organized a team of local young boys known as "Honus Wagners' Young Recruits." Babe Ruth, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Casey Stengel, and Ty Cobb also played baseball in Dawson Springs.


1958 World Series

An exhausted Ford walked Schoendienst loading the bases and Casey Stengel had seen enough motioning to the bullpen for reliever Art Ditmar.

East Side, West Side: Tales of New York Sporting Life 1910–1960

Among the personalities the book talks about in depth are Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe Louis, Primo Carnera, Tony Canzoneri, Sugar Ray Robinson, Casey Stengel, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Stillman, Jacob Ruppert and more.

Illinois–Indiana–Iowa League

Casey Stengel made the following comment in later life, evidently still feeling stung from having been traded by the New York Giants to the Boston Braves in the 1923-1924 off-season, despite having hit 2 game-winning home runs in the World Series: "It's lucky I didn't hit 3 home runs in three games, or McGraw would have traded me to the 3-I League!"

Peter Golenbock

Golenbock interviewed almost all of the Yankees of that era (including Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Casey Stengel, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris, Ralph Houk, and Yogi Berra).


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